Revisiting New Atheism

A Fifteen-Year Retrospective

This week, a clip of Richard Dawkins surfaced. It was a recent interview on the British media channel LBC. He expressed a sentiment that should fascinate those who are aware of his previous work. Dawkins answers the question of whether or not he would prefer Christianity over Islam by saying that he is “culturally Christian.” He was regretful of the advance of Islam in Western countries and said that he would rather choose Christianity “every single time” in a head-to-head matchup between the two.

This little episode was fascinating to me personally because a few weeks ago I had time to go back into the old RW archives and listen to the Mencius Moldbug article “How Dawkins Got PWND” through TTS. I had never actually interacted with Moldbug’s work until this point, always getting the SparkNotes version from other content creators. Furthermore, I have a slight tendency to seek out secondary literature, so I consciously read Burnham, Sorel, etc. beforehand. Indeed, the assertion that Dawkins was a Protestant Atheist of very specific vintage and theological lineage seems somewhat prophetic, considering that the original article was written at the height of the New Atheism movement’s prominence. I specifically remember watching Dawkins’s TED Talk on the subject in 2006.